


Somewhere Over the Rainbow

by ignipes



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic At The Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-11
Updated: 2007-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Outside: There were Munchkins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Waking up in Spencer's room wasn't the weird thing. Ryan had spent the night in Spencer's room more times than he could count, and it was a pretty familiar sight to wake up to.

No, the weird thing was that Spencer's room looked exactly like it had when he was nine, despite the fact that Ryan was pretty sure it hadn't looked like that for years.

The other weird thing was that everything was in black and white.

"Dude." Ryan reached out and hit Spencer as hard as he could. "What's wrong with your room?"

Spencer grunted and did not wake up.

Ryan hit him again. "No, seriously. Why is your room black and white?"

Finally, after a rather melodramatic production of rolling over and rubbing his eyes and yawning, Spencer blinked several times and said, "Huh." He rubbed his eyes again. "That's weird."

Spencer stood up and stumbled over to the door, tripping over Ryan's sleeping bag--and, okay, that was weird too, because they were rich and famous and totally _adults_ now and didn't have sleeping bag sleepovers anymore. (Not for like four whole months, anyway, and that one had been Jon's idea so it didn't count.) Spencer pulled open his bedroom door and sunlight flooded into the room.

Bright, cheery, yellow sunlight. Which did not, Ryan recalled, usually shine so brightly and cheerily in the hallway at Spencer's parents' house.

Spencer shut the door.

Opened it again.

"What the fuck." Pause. "Ryan? What the fuck?"

Ryan climbed out of his sleeping bag and walked over to the door. He blinked several times. "What the fuck."

Inside: They were standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the doorway of Spencer's mysteriously familiar pre-teen black and white bedroom.

Outside: There were Munchkins.

There were also flowers and trees, a clear blue sky and warm sunshine, a quaint village and butterflies bouncing merrily all around.

But the Munchkins seemed a little bit more important. They were short, and they were singing, and they were _Munchkins_.

"Spencer," Ryan said. "I don't think we're in--"

"Say it and I'll punch you in the balls."

"Was there a tornado?"

"Not that I remember."

"Do you think you killed anybody?"

"Me?" Spencer looked at Ryan in alarm. He was wearing pajama pants with teddy bears on them and a glittery pink t-shirt and his hair was sticking up about three inches from his head, so he looked pretty fucking hilarious, but he was definitely alarmed. "Why is this my fault?"

"It's your house," Ryan pointed out. "Your room. Whatever. That makes you Dorothy."

"Doesn't that make you Toto?" Spencer asked sweetly.

Perhaps Ryan hadn't thought through the logical consequences of blaming Spencer for transporting them to Munchkinland, but he wasn't going to admit it. "Let's go talk to the Lollypop Guild," he said, breezing out of the doorway in his most dignified manner.

The Munchkins stopped singing the moment Ryan and Spencer stepped outside.

"You're going to be in big trouble," one of them said.

They both turned to face him.

And stared.

"Patrick?" Ryan said. And oh, god, he was squeaking, just like a Munchkin. Maybe it was contagious. But more importantly: " _Patrick_?"

Spencer made a strangled sort of noise, like he was swallowing his tongue.

Patrick was wearing striped socks and an argyle sweater and pointy hat as tall as he was. "Big trouble," he said, narrowing his eyes. He wasn't squeaking--thank god, maybe it wasn't contagious after all--but he did look like he wanted to annihilate all the Technicolor flowers and butterflies and trees and other Munchkins with a flamethrower. He pointed past Ryan and Spencer and said, "Look what you did."

"It's Spencer's house," Ryan said automatically, then he turned to look.

Sure enough, there were feet sticking out from underneath Spencer's house (which, admittedly, did not look anything like Spencer's house).

There was also an arm sticking out from under the house, which was kind of gross. The feet were encased in black boots with big buckles on them, and the arm was wearing a black and white striped shirt. The boots were kind of awesome in a whips-and-handcuffs way, and Ryan wondered if it was bad manners to steal footwear from a dead body in Munchkinland.

"Um, oops?" Ryan said. He turned back to Patrick and tried to look at least a little bit ashamed. "I don't suppose whoever that is was a very bad person before getting squished?"

"The Wicked Witch of the West is going to be _so fucking pissed_ ," Patrick said. There was just a little bit of malicious glee in his voice. Ryan had always suspected that Patrick was a closet sadist who took great joy in the pain of others. "I hope you're ready to get eaten alive by flying monkeys."

That didn't sound fun. Ryan glanced at Spencer, who was turning a rather brilliant shade of purple with the effort of not laughing. Ryan rolled his eyes. It was probably time for them to leave Munchkinland, before Spencer recovered enough to start making fun of Patrick and Patrick lost his temper and started biting their knees.

"Is there like a yellow brick road or something around here?" he asked.

"What the hell do you want that for?" Patrick asked.

"Because that's how it goes," Ryan said impatiently. It wasn't his fault they had to follow the stupid road. He didn't make the stories; he just wrote the metaphorical songs about them. And sometimes dressed up like characters in them, but only for the sake of the _art_ , no matter what Spencer said.

"Okay, whatever," Patrick said grumpily. "It's that way. Watch out for flying monkeys."

There was, in fact, a yellow brick road.

They made it about thirty seconds outside of Munchkinland before Spencer cracked up, laughing so hard he fell into Ryan as they walked along. And yeah, okay, Patrick the Very Angry Munchkin was pretty funny, so Ryan laughed a little too. But not too much, because he was on a quest. Maybe it was Spencer's room that had squashed the stripey-clothed person with the fantastic dominatrix boots, but Spencer wasn't really a quest kind of guy. Ryan knew whose story this was.

Walking along the Yellow Brick Road (Ryan inserted the capital letters automatically when he thought about it) with Spencer was actually quite pleasant. They sang some songs from the movie and definitely, absolutely did not skip in any way, and there was not one evil carnivorous flying monkey in the sky.

Ryan didn't know how long they were walking along, but when they got to some cornfields he started to pay attention, because he knew how the story went.

And sure enough, before long they heard somebody singing out in the fields.

Spencer stopped short. "That sounds like--"

"Brendon," Ryan finished. He would know that voice anywhere. He veered off the Yellow Brick Road and crashed through the rows of corn, Spencer right behind him. "Brendon!"

"Hey, guys!"

Brendon was wearing a flannel shirt and denim overalls and he was tied to a post, but he looked pretty happy about it. He waved enthusiastically when they ran up. "Do you think you could get me down from here?" he asked. "These stupid birds keep pooping on my head."

"Aren't you supposed to be a scarecrow?" Spencer asked--a little bit meanly, in Ryan's opinion, because it probably wasn't fun to be tied to a post in a cornfield.

But Brendon just laughed. "Yeah, but I suck at it. I mean, isn't it kind of mean, scaring birds away just because they're hungry? And I like the way their little feet feel on my arms."

"You're the worst scarecrow ever," Spencer declared, but he helped Ryan untie Brendon's arms and legs and set him firmly on the ground.

Brendon did a little dance to shake out his limbs, flinging straw everywhere, and said, "So, Emerald City?"

Brendon knew the words to, seriously, every single Judy Garland musical _ever_ , and he had a tendency to skip rather enthusiastically, leaving a trail of straw behind him. He was about halfway through _Babes in Arms_ when he stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the road. Ryan stopped behind him, and Spencer walked into Ryan's back.

"Why, it's a man!" Brendon exclaimed. "A man made out of tin!"

Ryan stared. "No, it's not. It's Jon."

"Wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil," Spencer added. "Jon, why are you wearing aluminum foil on your head?"

Jon reached up to touch his hat and shrugged. "I don't know? It's cool. I kind of like it."

"I guess that makes you the Tin Man," Ryan said, frowning. He didn't really approve of that; Jon wasn't heartless. (Brendon wasn't brainless either, and Spencer wasn't a terrier--except in the stubborn-as-hell metaphorical way, but Ryan valued his life so he never said that out loud--but there had to be some room for artistic interpretation.)

"Aluminum Man," Brendon corrected. "It's not the same thing."

"But it's harder to say," Jon pointed out. He adjusted one of the pointy antennae on his aluminum foil hat and asked, "Hey, are we going to the Emerald City? Do you think it's really made out of emeralds?"

Jon also knew all of the words to every Judy Garland musical ever, which was really not as surprising as it should have been. He and Brendon skipped away happily while Ryan and Spencer followed more slowly, eating apples and pretending they didn't want to skip too. Brendon had just launched into a truly stunning rendition of "The Trolley Song" when a fearsome beast lurched out of the woods, roaring and lashing out with its arms before collapsing in a heap in the middle of the Yellow Brick Road.

Spencer took a bite of his apple and stared down at the fearsome beast. "Lion, tiger, or bear?"

Jon shoved the beast over with his foot. "Guitarist," he said. "Hi, Joe."

Joe grinned up at them. "Did you see the size of that fucking bird?"

They all looked around; there were no birds.

Ryan frowned again, but there really was no helping it. Joe's hair did kind of look like a mane, sort of, in silhouette, if you squinted. "We're going to the Emerald City," he said. "Want to come?"

Joe didn't know the words to all of Judy Garland's songs, but he was pretty good at making up filthy substitute lyrics, which was even better.

They made it all the way to the edge of the poppy fields before they saw the flying monkeys. Ryan sighed with disappointment; he couldn't help it. He'd kind of been looking forward to the poppy fields, because it wasn't much of a quest without an interlude of profound realizations made whilst in an altered state of consciousness. But the monkeys were approaching pretty damn fast, and they looked hungry.

"Don't worry," Spencer said. "Joe will definitely grab some of those flowers and let you smoke them later."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Ryan said, because he hated it when Spencer read his mind. "But I'll let the monkeys eat you first anyway."

"Why do they want me? This is your fucked-up quest."

"Because the Wicked Witch of the West told them to get me _and_ my little dog too," Ryan said, smiling.

It was probably a good thing the monkeys swooped down to pick them up just then.

The evil carnivorous flying monkeys flew them across the land toward a big, gothic castle, through open doors on a balcony, and set them down in the center of a cluttered room. There was a cauldron bubbling over a fire, a lot of witchy-looking things on crooked shelves, and, weirdly, a stack of comic books by the fireplace.

"Guys," a voice behind them said, "why did you have to do that?"

They both turned around. There was a stunned silence. Spencer elbowed Ryan in the ribs, and Ryan elbowed Spencer back.

"Dude," Spencer hissed, completely failing at the 'whisper' part of 'stage whisper,' "Gerard Way is the Wicked Witch of the West."

Ryan tried to be surprised. He failed.

"Hi," he said. He was suddenly glad that he wasn't wearing the My Chemical Romance t-shirt he sometimes slept in, because that would be a little embarrassing. "So, you're a wicked witch, huh?"

"You don't have a whole room full of detached heads, do you?" Spencer asked nervously. ( _Return to Oz_ had taken its toll in his youth.) (Or maybe he'd just been spending too much time lately listening to _Bullets_ on repeat.)

"No," Gerard said sadly. Then he asked again, "Why did you have to do that?" He looked, Ryan thought, like the most pathetic wicked witch in the world, and also like he hadn't showered or changed his clothes in about a week. "A whole _house_. I can't believe you dropped a _whole house_ on my brother."

"Oh, shit," Spencer gasped.

"That was Mikey?" Ryan said. Of course it was; he should have recognized the gay pirate shirt and fantastic dominatrix boots. "Oh, shit. Man. We're so--we are so so sorry. We didn't know--"

"I mean, it's not like we could control it," Spencer said. "There was a desert tornado sandstorm or something."

"And it was totally Spencer's house, not mine," Ryan put in.

"It's okay." Gerard sighed dramatically. "He's fine. He just has a bitch of a headache and won't stop whining about it. I swear, he's the biggest fucking baby, like getting a house dropped on him means he can't make his own stupid grilled cheese sandwiches and get his own stupid juice boxes."

Ryan exhaled in relief; he was very glad he and Spencer weren't going to spend the rest of their lives as the guys who killed Mikey Way with a house. (Ryan was also glad he hadn't stolen the BDSM boots from Mikey's not-quite-dead body. That would have been awkward to explain.)

"We really are sorry," Spencer said, going for his sincere voice. He wasn't very good at it, but it was a worthy effort. "Is there anything we can do?"

"Nah." Gerard waved one hand vaguely and walked over to the bubbling cauldron. "You guys want some apple cider? Not the hard stuff, of course, but I put lots of cinnamon in it."

So they drank apple cider with the Wicked Witch of the West and listened attentively while he told them all about his awesome and cool and super-amazing flying monkeys. ("They're not _evil_ ," he insisted, "they're just doing what's natural for them, you know, like evolution made them in prehistoric jungles and shit when they had to fly to escape predators like saber-toothed tigers, and we shouldn't hold it against them.") When they finally found a polite way to extricate themselves, the flying monkeys took them back to the road. The flight wasn't so scary once they knew they weren't in danger of being eaten unless evolution demanded it.

Brendon, Jon, and Joe were sitting by the side of the road just outside the Emerald City. They had, it seemed, taken their time going through the poppy fields, and they were all giggling. They lurched to their feet easily enough, and together the five of them went to the Emerald City, pretty much ambling now rather than skipping.

The doors of the Emerald City were closed, but when Ryan knocked a little window slid open.

"State your business!"

"We're here to see the Wizard," Ryan said.

"State your business!"

"I just did."

"State you--oh, hey, Ross. What's up?"

Ryan couldn't see any more than eyes through the slit of window, but now that the gatekeeper wasn't shouting imperiously with a fake accent, he recognized the voice. "Bill? What are you--never mind. Can you let us in?"

William's eyes scrunched up as though he was considering the matter very carefully. "I don't know," he said slowly. "Did you state your business?"

"Wizard, Bill. We want to see the Wizard."

"The Wizard, yeah, he's cool," William said. "All right, give me a minute. Or two. This door, I swear..."

The window slid shut, and there was a long, complicated series of clanks and clattering on the other side. After what felt like forever--Joe had slid to the ground and was napping against Jon's legs--the door finally opened.

William welcomed them inside with a grand flourish. He was dressed kind of like a Buckingham Palace guard, except the uniform was green, and Ryan really didn't want to know. "Ladies and--well, gentlemen and gentlemen, I give you the Emerald City!"

"The Emerald City looks kind of like Circus Circus," Spencer said, looking around after they all filed inside. Without even turning around, he added, "No, Brendon, you can't go on the trapeze."

"I wonder where the Wizard is?" Ryan said.

Jon poked his shoulder. "Over there, maybe?"

He was pointing at a huge, flashing neon sign that said, "THE WIZARD." There was a helpful arrow in green lights indicating a large doorway.

"Right." Ryan tried to look like he'd known that all along. "Let's go see the Wizard."

The Wizard's chamber had a long, flowing red curtain at one end with a throne in front of it, and somebody had a fog machine generating some serious mist. It made the whole room feel kind of damp and swampy.

"Hello!" Brendon shouted. "Mr. Wizard, are you here?"

Ryan felt that perhaps they should approach with a little bit more respect, but before he could say anything a voice boomed through the chamber: " _The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz bids you come forward!_ "

They inched forward. It was a little bit stupid to be scared, but the voice was awfully huge and the fog machine awfully foggy, and Ryan couldn't help but worry a little bit.

" _Who are you?_ " the voice demanded.

Spencer frowned. "Does anybody else think that voice sounds kind of familiar?"

"A little," Brendon said.

" _The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz does not have time for this. Who are you?_ "

"Dude," Joe said. "Totally. Pete, man, what the hell? Where are you?""

" _The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz does not know what you are talking about_ ," the voice rumbled somewhat frantically. " _The Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz bids you come forward!_ "

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Pete, seriously, you're not fooling anybody." He strode forward and tried to shove the curtain aside, but somebody behind it shoved back.

" _Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!_ "

"Oh, my god, you are so ridiculous." Ryan yanked on the curtain, hard, and ignored the squawk of protest. It was possible he was a little angry and, okay, maybe a little disappointed too. He'd kind of been hoping that the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz would be somebody cooler than Pete Wentz. (Like David Bowie in _Labyrinth_. That would have been awesome, and much more wizardly.)

"Hey!" Pete was scowling and standing with his hands on his hips. "You're not supposed to look behind the curtain."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Pete sighed. "You know, Ross, I really miss the days when you used to worship me with mindless devotion."

Ryan crossed his arms and glared. "I can't believe this is the end of my quest."

"It is really lame," Spencer agreed, because he was the world's worst friend.

Pete looked affronted. "I'm the motherfucking Wizard of motherfucking Oz, dudes. What more do you want?"

"Shoes," Brendon said.

They all turned to look at him. Well, all of them except Joe and Jon, who were sitting on the throne and smoking and grabbing languidly at the fog from the fog machine.

"I mean, shouldn't there be ruby slippers?" Brendon looked down at Ryan's bare feet and shook his head. "That won't work at all. Don't you have anything for him to wear?" he asked Pete. "Something sparkly?"

Pete looked thoughtful, then vanished behind the curtain for a few minutes.

"I don't want ruby slippers," Ryan grumbled.

"If you don't wear the ruby slippers, you won't ever get back to Kansas," Brendon said.

"I hate Kansas," Ryan said. Their bus had broken down at a rest stop in Kansas once and Ryan had been attacked by mutant squirrels. "I don't want to go anywhere near Kansas."

"We'll protect you from mutant squirrels," Spencer assured him, which would have been nice if he wasn't smiling so evilly.

Pete reemerged from behind the curtain. "Ta-da!"

He was holding--

Well, okay. He was holding a pair of ruby slippers.

Ruby high heels, actually, but maybe that was the same thing as slippers a hundred years ago or whenever Oz was real. They were very red and very sparkly and--Ryan frowned thoughtfully--actually kind of pretty. Not as cool as Mikey Way's dominatrix boots, but they did have a certain elegant style to them.

"You have to wear them," Pete said, grinning like a crazy person.

"That's the only way we'll ever get home," Brendon said.

"They totally match your new silk scarf," Spencer said.

"Dude, _fog_ ," Joe said. "It's like _water_ in the _air_."

Ryan sighed. "I hate you all."

He put on the ruby slippers. They were not comfortable at all. "How the hell do girls wear shoes like this all the time without dying?"

"Click your heels," Brendon said.

"I _know_ ," Ryan snapped. "I've seen the stupid movie too, you know."

He clicked his heels; nothing happened.

Everybody was frowning. Brendon offered, "Maybe you have to say the words?"

Oh. Right. The words.

Ryan closed his eyes, because this was really fucking embarrassing, and clicked his heels. "There's no place like home." _Click_. "There's no place like home." _Click_. "There's no place like home."

Slowly, cautiously, he opened his eyes.

He was in his bunk, and he could hear the familiar sound of the highway rushing beneath the bus. Everything was the color it was supposed to be. Ryan dropped out of bed--he was barefoot, thankfully--and rubbed his hand over his face before stumbling down the narrow corridor and looking around for a long, tense moment.

"Um, Ryan? You okay?" Spencer was sitting on the floor, lacing up a pair of shoes. Jon and Brendon were behind him on the couch; Jon was not wearing an aluminum foil hat and Brendon did not have any straw sticking out of his clothing.

"And there are no Munchkins," Ryan said, just in case.

"No," Jon agreed easily. "Were you expecting Munchkins?"

Ryan yawned and collapsed across Brendon and Jon on the couch. "I just had the weirdest dream."

"You were talking in your sleep," Jon said. "It must've been exciting."

"If it was a sex dream, we don't want to hear about it," Spencer said.

Brendon disagreed. "If it was a sex dream, I want to hear all about it."

"It wasn't a sex dream," Ryan said. "It was a musical dream, with skipping. And flying monkeys. Pete had a fog machine. And you were there, and you were there, and dude, Spence, you were my little dog Toto."

He probably should have seen it coming, but he wasn't fast enough to block the shoe Spencer threw at his head.

Ryan just threw the shoe back and felt smug when Spencer yelped in pain. "No place like home," he murmured, shifting around until Jon's knees wasn't digging into his back.

He would look pretty fucking awesome wearing sparkly red shoes.


End file.
